The United States and Israel are allegedly behind the potent Flame malware, which targets countries in the Middle East, according to a US newspaper.

The United States and Israel are allegedly behind the potent Flame malware, which targets countries in the Middle East, according to a US newspaper.

The Washington Post cited anonymous Western officials “with knowledge of the effort,” suggesting that the US National Security Agency, the CIA and the Israeli military all worked together on crafting the complex computer virus.

The target, it appears, is Iran, with the malware designed to “slow Iran's nuclear program,” potentially linking it with the Stuxnet virus that crippled Iran's nuclear facilities, which is also believed to be the work of the US and Israel.

The malware differs from Stuxnet in that it is not designed to cause damage, but acts at a highly sophisticated level to steal data, taking screenshots, recording sounds near the infected computer, and connecting and spreading to nearby devices via Bluetooth.

Kaspersky Labs, which discovered Flame, noted that the majority of attacks, 189, were focused on Iran, but there were 98 in Israel and Palestine, and 32 in Sudan.

Flame may be only the beginning of something much bigger, however. A former US high-ranking intelligence official told the Washington Post that the malware “is about preparing the battlefield for another type of covert action. Cyber-collection against the Iranian programme is way further down the road than this.”

Iran has since developed a fix for the virus, but given that it had been in operation since 2010, chances are that there are other undetected malware out there, secretly collecting information and paving the way for what some consider the next battlefront: all out cyber war.